


What is there missing from me, that I see in you?

by chaoticdean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: #SpnStayAtHome | SPN Stay at Home Challenge, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel Has Realizations (Supernatural), Castiel in the Empty (Supernatural), DeanCas - Freeform, Destiel - Freeform, Falling In Love, Feelings, Hope, Idiots in Love, M/M, Monday 8: Hope, SPN 13x01, assholes in love, casdean - Freeform, spn 12x23, spn coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24446404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticdean/pseuds/chaoticdean
Summary: Set in-between the end of season 12 and the beginning of season 13, Cas has been killed by Lucifer and awakes in the Empty.This has been written as part of the SPN Stay at Home challenge / Week 8 — prompt: hope.Title is from "Raise Today" by Peasant [x]
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 40





	What is there missing from me, that I see in you?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my gang of proofreaders: Camille, Sarah, and Marjo. ♡

The first thing Cas finds out is that he doesn’t feel _a single thing_. 

Like, sure, he feels lost and for the most part, confused. Everything around him is pitch black, he’s alone in what seems like an immensity of nothing. 

But he doesn’t feel any physical sensation. He isn’t cold, or hot. His head doesn’t hurt like it has been for the most part of this last year since he became this mixture of beat-up angel/somewhat human on certain aspects. He doesn’t sweat. He pinches himself and _doesn’t feel a single shit._ And it makes him feel completely distressed.

What the hell did he get himself into this time?

It used to make him laugh grudgingly. Castiel, fallen Angel of the Lord, still somewhat angel-y but not enough to not break a sweat while following the brothers on a hunt, not enough not to request a cheeseburger at the diner every now and then, not enough to pass on a good night sleep every week. 

He used to despise emotions. That’s how he was raised, or rather how he was trained. E _motions are inherently human, Castiel. We are not allowed to feel._ He could almost still hear the voice in his head, telling him —

But since he descended onto Hell to recover the Righteous Man, since he stared into Dean’s soul to rebuild him and bring him back to the face of the Earth, since this last decade of running around with the Winchesters by his side, Castiel has felt more than he ever thought he’d encountered.

A whirlwind of emotions suddenly overcomes him as he tries and remembers what happened before he ended up here.

Jack being birthed into the world.

Kelly, up in heaven.

Apocalypse World, Crowley killing himself for the greater good (that was a twist), trapping Lucifer.

Lucifer sliding his angel blade across Castiel’s body, as he was coming back to their world facing the Winchester brothers.

The look on Sam and Dean’s faces.

 _Dean_. 

The first emotion Castiel had ever felt was _curiosity_. He wasn’t used to humanity or any of their customs. So whenever he came down on Earth, he’d observed them to try and get a grasp at why humans did things the way they did. 

When he first met Sam and Dean, it took him a long while to get used to the way they acted, behaved, or even talked. The fact that Castiel didn’t seem to get any of the references they made usually got them to crack up. Sometimes he still gets lost into their bickering, not fully understanding the reason why anyone would think having an argument over pineapple on pizza at 11 pm would be worth the trouble but after more than a decade with the two grown-men, knowing better than inserting himself into that said argument. 

But curiosity always got the best of him. From trying to understand why Dean needed his 4 hours of sleep, to what made Led Zeppelin IV the best album on earth (that’s a wild assumption, but Castiel was willing to hear the hunter’s arguments on that matter). 

Then came _guilt_. It was a peculiar feeling, mixed sensations of shame, bitterness, and sadness, with a hint of anger. Guilt gave Castiel a lot to think about, coming to grip with all these new feelings that he hadn’t experienced for thousands of years. 

He felt guilty because heaven made him choose. It was either them or the Winchesters. And at first, he did chose the angels. His family. The only thing he’d ever known. But then masks crumbled and kingdoms fell, and Castiel realized his whole life as a celestial being might have been a big fat lie. 

And so he chose humanity. He chose Sam and Dean. He chose them over his own family, and although things this last decade have been challenging, to say the least, he doesn’t regret any of it. Not anymore.

 _Resentment_ was a weird feeling to come across. Once again, it mixed other feelings such as anger, sadness, betrayal. But resentment came from a weird place where you’d bottle up this mixture of feelings for a certain amount of time before it actually sweats through the pores of your skin. 

Before he first became human, Castiel had never felt resentment. But then the angels fell, Metatron stole his grace, and Cas was left alone on Earth with his new-found humanity. Heartbroken and ashamed, and resentful because no one seemed to care about him anymore. Dean kicked him out of the bunker — he’d later found out why, and although he now understood the reason behind this decision, it doesn’t mean it still stung his heart thinking about it. The man he had sacrificed everything for didn’t want him around. And weirdly enough, at that time, Castiel kind of understood. After all, why would anyone want to be associated with the one who had caused his entire community to fall, his Home to crumble? 

The emotions are overflowing him now, which isn’t good. He needs to get it together, figure out a way to get out of here and get back to Earth, to the bunker, to the Winchesters, to _Dean_. 

Castiel sits up and takes his hands to his cheeks, resting his face in the comfort of his palms. They are warm and weirdly welcoming. He closes his eyes, trying to come to grasp with the situation.

No matter what he does, his thoughts always take him back to a familiar, dirty blond, freckled hunter. 

Dean had been a lighthouse in the darkness of his numerous battles for over a decade. Someone he’d rushed to after a fight, someone he’d follow into any battle. And now, he was gone. Or rather, Castiel was lost in emptiness, with no way to know if he’d ever return. And that leaves him with bitterness at the bottom of his throat.

If he only had the courage to speak up (or as Dean would say, “ _to grow a pair and man up”)_ , maybe things would’ve been different, and he wouldn’t be left alone with his doubts and regrets for what seems like an eternity already. 

If he had told Dean how he felt every time he looked into his eyes, would it have changed anything? Would things be different if he had stay instead of leaving every time it became too much being locked up in the bunker with the man he was in love with? 

Yes, Castiel was in _love_ with Dean Winchester. Deeply, completely, irrevocably, stupidly in love with his entire being. 

And it turns out love is a very complicated feeling, and a very challenging emotion to go through. Perhaps the most challenging of all. 

Of course, he didn’t realize right away. When he first met Dean, Cas was an entirely different character — he was ruthless, determined, even competitive at the time. Yet he fell for Dean in an entirely unexpected way, without even realizing it at first. 

He fell for the cocky bastard who acted like he didn’t trust him but still prayed for him to come down whenever he needed him. He fell for the man who used sarcasm as a parachute for his low self-esteem and ate like cholesterol wasn’t even a real thing. He fell for the man who would rather sacrifice himself so that his loved one could live. 

Castiel was in love with Dean Winchester since the very first time he laid eyes on him, and yet here he was, decades later, stuck in a horizon of nothing, lamenting over his biggest failure of them all: never telling him. 

Because let’s face it, there was no way Dean would ever return his feelings. Castiel was a brother to the hunter, nothing more. And he never did anything to prove him wrong either. So Cas had locked his feeling deep inside of him and enjoyed every little snippet of joy he could share with the man. Most of all, he tried to convince himself that this was good, that he didn’t need to know, that this was enough.

 _Bullshit_.

It was _not_. 

And it took the angel being locked up in some sort of parallel pitch black dimension of nothing to realize how full of shit he had been. 

Sinking further into his own hands, Castiel let a small whimper escape from his throat, pain clinging to his heart like a thousand needles poking at his sorrow.

 _Pain_. Pain was the most common feeling he’d experienced of them all. It appeared in so many ways, sometimes mixed with other feelings, sometimes only physical. 

It might have been the worst of them all, too. Because pain never seemed to go away. It always stayed right there, at the back of his head, or hooked to his sleeves, waiting for an opportunity to come down on him and destroy him for a little while.

His worst memories were all associated with this feeling. The pain of being betrayed by his own kind. The pain of being left alone. The pain of arguing with Sam and Dean. The pain of seeing the disappointment on Dean’s face. The pain of killing his own kind. The pain of losing those he loved.

The pain of losing Sam and Dean.

 _Dean_.

Castiel brings his knees to his face, resting over them as he slowly drifts into despair. He needs to go back. He needs to find his way back to Earth. He needs to tell him. Suddenly, all that matters to him is to get the hell out of here and scream at the whole world to let them know how it feels.

How it feels when he catches Dean smiling, bumping his fingers in sync with the music on the wheel while riding shotgun in the Impala after they finished a hunt.

How it feels when he hears Dean’s warm laugh tearing the bunker’s silence apart after they go home and share dinner together.

How it feels when they understand each other without using any words because that’s a thing they’ve developed over the years.

How it feels when Dean wants to share time with him, watching a movie he invariably ends up sleeping in front of after half an hour.

How it feels when Castiel watches him sleep, studying the edges of his face, gazing at how peaceful he seems whenever they’re in the comfort of their home.

A burst of _hope_ suddenly overcomes the angel, causing him to open in his eyes again.

There’s no way he’ll stay stuck in here, wherever that may be. He needs to go back, he _demands_ to go back. 

He refuses to stay cuddled up in nothing, stuck with despair and sorrow, buried in regrets. Is this really how the story of "Castiel, Angel of the Lord” supposed to end?

So he gets up. He screams. In the name of _Hope_. Because he chooses to believe that his story isn’t over. Because he chooses to believe that hope is bigger than any of the other feelings that are trapped inside of him.

 _Hope and love are the most powerful forces on the planet_ , he thinks.

And eventually, the Empty awakes. 

_He’s coming home._

**Author's Note:**

> _**[rebloggable on Tumblr](https://chaoticdean.tumblr.com/post/619806631731052544/what-is-there-missing-from-me-that-i-see-in-you) ** _


End file.
